MaleShaped Magdalen
by Matrix Refugee
Summary: A Catholic nun in an order that helps various outcasts takes in a lover-Mecha on the run
1. Part One

+J.M.J.+

Male-Shaped Magdalen

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

It's been a long time since I posted a new Joe fic, and I wrote this trying to exorcise my imagination of the splatterpunk "Road to Perdition" fics I've gotten myself roped into. This is arguably alternate universe: Joe is on the run for his life, but he seems not to have gotten snagged by the Flesh Fair, or have encountered David. I got this idea somewhat from Rumer Godden's novel "Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy", but it was also inspired by Laurie E. Smith's Graham Greene-like fic "Confession". I'm Catholic, as some of you may know, and I once considered going into a convent, but I think there's little hope for that, now that—like Sister Madalaine in this story—I've crossed paths with a certain green-eyed beauty.

Disclaimer:

I do not own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, et al. I also do not intend this to be an indictment of religious celibacy/chastity, nor do I intend this to make religious Sisters seem weak-willed, so don't go reading things into this that aren't intended! "Constructive criticism charitably expressed is gladly accepted. Flames will be used to roast marshmallows. And troll posts can just stay under the bridge."

Sister Madalaine carefully tightened the last tiny bolt holding a miniscule pulley to the frame. "There, that should do it," she said. She pressed the release switch and closed the dermis. She reached under the supine Mecha's head and pressed the power switch in and back.

The female figure on the worktable sat up and rolled down her sleeve. "Merci beaucoup, Soeur Madalaine," she said.

"You're very welcome, Jacqueline," Sister Madalaine replied.

"Do you speak French, Soeur?" the nanny-Mecha asked as the young nun helped her down from the table.

"I know a few words, but not enough to carry on a conversation," Sister Madalaine replied, leading her out of St. Aquin's Guest House to the main house of the convent, into the parlor.

A young man holding a child on his arm got up from the worn couch where he had been seated. "Sister, thank God! was she badly damaged?"

"She just had a few conductors knocked around and some of her pulleys had come loose," Sister Madalaine replied.

The child giggled and reached out to the nanny-Mecha.

"Andres, did you miss your Jacqueline?" the nanny asked. The young man put the child in her arms. Andres hugged the nanny about her neck as she stroked him tenderly.

"What can I do to repay you for this?" the young man said. "I was lost without Jacqueline, what with Angelina's illness and everything else. You may have saved my sanity."

"We don't do this for pay," Sister Madalaine said, reminding him.

"But your order must need some recompense."

"We only accept donations."

He reached inside his jacket, drew out a checkbook and wrote out a check. "Here," he said, tearing out the slip and handing it to her. "This isn't nearly enough, but it should help. Give this to your superior to help with your upkeep."

"Thank you. We'll use it wisely," she said. "Take care of yourself and your family. God be with you."

"I will, and I can keep taking care of them thanks to your help," he said, leading the little Mecha-woman out into the sunlight of the outer courtyard.

Sister Madalaine brought the check up to Sister Superior's office, where she was at work managing the convent's bookkeeping.

"Mr. Ralston gave me this after Jacqueline was repaired," she said, handing the check across the desk. 

Sister Superior endorsed it. "Was it difficult?"

"No, thank heavens. Just some simple mechanical quirks."

Sister Superior handed the check back to her. "Take this, go into the town with Sister Consolata and have it cashed. You told me this morning you needed to buy some supplies for the St. Aquin House: now would be a good time to buy them."

"Yes, Sister," Sister Madalaine said, hiding the joy at the privilege of going out.

"So you got the nanny-Mecha back to the Ralston family," Sister Consolata said as they walked down the path to the road into town.

"Yes, Mr. Ralston was almost beside himself with relief when I brought Jacqueline back to him," Sister Madalaine replied.

"He's blessed to be able to have a Mecha to look after his son and his wife, with her ill and the wee one just walking."

"And he's blessed to live this close to the convent, what with the prices the corporations charge for models as old as Jacqueline, whose warranties expired years ago."

"That's why Father Vestor founded this order, because he wanted better treatment for Mechas, treatment the corporations wouldn't even think of." She smiled. "And it also gives talented young folks like you a place to work for the best kind of wages."

"Are you referring to me?" Sister Madalaine asked, innocent.

"I was referring to how well you've progressed in the four years since that black-clad girl with the chip on her shoulder came to the convent."

"With her hair cropped down almost to nothing," Sister Madalaine added, adjusting the black kerchief she wore.

"It made it easier when you made your first temporary vows: Sister Superior didn't have to cut it."

They went first to the bank, then to the hardware store, just as the morning sun started to turn hot and the noonday glare off the street and the glass windows of the storefronts grew thick with haze.

A half hour later, after Sister Madalaine had picked up the coils of conductor fiber and the boxes of titanium bolts they needed in the St. Aquin House, she and Sister Consolata stepped out of the cool of the store, onto the warm street.  
Almost as soon as they emerged, they heard it: a clamor of voices and footsteps clattering at a near distance, echoing off the storefronts and resounding on the quiet street.

From around a street corner sped a tall, dark figure, a young man in a long black jacket whose skirts flowed like water on the draft behind him. He ran with the precision of a long-distance runner, but with the grace of an antelope. He glanced back only once.

A mob of men clattered him, shouting and brandishing sticks and stones and other things wielded as weapons. Someone hurled a stone at the young man. It caught a glancing blow off the side of his neck. The young man let out a scream of pain, a high, short, shrill sound. He changed direction, heading straight for the shade under the overhang of the hardware store, where Sister Madalaine and Sister Consolata stood.

Another stone struck the young man in the back of the knee. He stumbled and fell to the ground on his knees before them.

Sister Consolata stepped out of the shadows, putting her stocky form between the mob and the young man as they came up short behind their prey.

"What are you doing to this young man?!" Sister Consolata demanded.

A heavy-set man armed with a stick stepped forward. "Give him back to us, nun. He's ours!"

"Why? What has he done that makes you go after him like this, all of you at once, armed, and he doesn't have anything."

Another man with a sallow face, holding two chunks of rock in each hand, stepped up alongside the first man. "I just caught this thing with my daughter, trying to seduce her," he cried, one hand cocked, ready to throw the stone at the young man.

Sister Madalaine studied the young man. He wasn't panting and on a warm day like this, with his long jacket and the long sleeved shirt and long black trousers he wore under it, he would surely have broken out in a sweat, at least from the exertion. But his emerald-green eyes bore an unblinking look of blank resignation and something like dignity in spite of it. Something too perfect, too pretty about the face, the features were too well molded to be a mere mortal's. An almost faunlike or even elfin lingered about it.

"Are any of you any less sinful?" Sister Madalaine replied, looking up.

"The Good Book says, 'The woman that shall lie under a beast shall be stoned to death along with the same', and something like that silicon pr--- is lower than a beast!" the sallow-faced man snapped.

"The Bible also says, 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone'. If he is what you say he is, then he has no more knowledge of his actions than a simpleton," Sister Consolata replied.

"Now you nuns are sticking up for sex machines!" the stocky man shouted. 

"I bet you 'ud love something like him: no more slipping out at midnight to meet up with the monks!" someone else yelled from the back of the crowd. The crowd started to move in on them, grumbling.

"We intend only to repair him and give him back to his owner," Sister Madalaine said, speaking up on the young Mecha's behalf.

"So he can go on seducing our daughters and our wives?" someone else in the crowd retorted.

Sister Madalaine stood up to her full height. "No, so that please God, his owners will find a better use for him."

The crowd rumbled irritably and shuffled their feet. One by one, they went away, still carrying their weapons.

"You'll wish you'd never taken that creature in!" the sallow-face man shouted over his shoulder.

Sister Madalaine stooped down to the young man-Mecha; she slipped her hands under his arms and helped him to his feet. He stood slightly taller than he was: they had built him so slender he appeared taller than he really was. He looked into her face, his face losing its look of resignation and taking on a look of curiosity, even a flirtatious look she ignored.

"Well, you're safe now, as long as you're with us, boy," Sister Consolata said. "Better for us to get you out of here before they change their minds."

"Who are you? Where then do you intend to take me?" he asked, trying to grasp what was going on.

"I'm Sister Consolata of the Order of St. Maximilian," the shorter nun said. "The girl who helped you up is Sister Madalaine."

"And you are?" Sister Madalaine asked.  
He bowed to them with the grace of an actor. "Gigolo Joe at your service," he said. His eye took in their black veils and long gray tunics over baggy pants, curious. "But you may call me just Joe."

"Do you have an owner?" Sister Madalaine asked.

A blank look passed over his face. "I had one, but since I have been implicated in such bad trouble, she doubtlessly has no more use for the likes of me."

"Well, let's take you back to the guest house, get you cleaned up and fixed up if need be," Sister Consolata said, leading the two young folk back to the convent. Sister Madalaine put a hand on his shoulder, just steering him in the right direction.

As they walked back, Sister Madalaine kept her eyes discreetly averted from Joe. His perfectly contoured face reminded her oddly of the face of a Greek statue she had had a crush on as a teenager. If that statue had been clothed in gleaming black garments and brought to life by a bolt of lightning, it might have looked much like the young Mecha at her side.

She recognized his model, a Belladerma J-12291972. She might have welded the aluminum alloy armatures of his ribcage back when she had still lived in the world, but she doubted it. Or maybe she only wanted to dismiss the thought. Or remind herself of what she was.

Sister Consolata brought Joe to the St. Aquin House, where the Mechas they took in were kept. Sister Madalaine stowed the supplies in the workroom of the same house, careful to keep away from Joe, and thanking God for a reprieve. She could get away from those calm, relentlessly beautiful eyes, like living jewels.

Father Marcus, the chaplain, stuck his head in. "Oh, there you are, Sister Madalaine," he said.

"Hello, Father."

"Is it true what Sister Abigail is talking about, you and Sister Consolata standing up to Bo Bainbridge and his clan?"

"We had to. They were going to stone a late-generation lover model to pieces then and there if we hadn't intervened," she said, closing a cabinet door.

"She made it sound like a recreation of Christ protecting the woman caught in adultery."

"It probably looked that way, and it's arguably the modern day version," she said. "But God knows I'm a pretty poor stand-in for His Son."

"You do all right," Father Marcus said, heading out.

Sister Madalaine caught herself inwardly cursing the gossipy Sister Abigail, then she realized her own faux pas. She was no better or worse than Sister Abigail.

"Is it true what Sister Abigail's chattering about?" asked Sister Jeromeia, the novice mistress, a middle-sized woman with a soft face and cool gray eyes, as Sister Madalaine cleared the refectory table

"That we kept the Bainbridge brothers from destroying a male lover model? Yes, he's in the guest house," Sister Madalaine replied.

"But what are you going to do with…that?" Sister Jeromeia demanded. "We can't keep him here, we have impressionable young Sisters."

"We'll take it one day at a time. I doubt he'll do much harm, if any. Besides, he could have a fatal system failure tonight."

"But he could linger here for days and tempt the young Sisters."

"That might not happen either. We'll just keep an eye on him. His owner might come for him in a day or two."

"But that will give him license to keep seducing young women."

"At least he won't be pursuing the impressionable young Sisters," Sister Madalaine pointed out and she went into the kitchen with a stack of dishes.

They housed the Orgas and Mechas in separate houses, respectively the Good Samaritan House and the St. Aquin House, named in honor of a Mecha that had learned theology better than many Orga theologians. They did this not out of prejudice, but to respect the concerns of the Orgas who were often nervous at being housed with Mechas. Their founder, Father Kolbe Vestor had recognized the robot as a subcreation of man and quite possibly a new form of man, a pale reflection of the chief of God's creations upon this planet.

Because of the skills she had learned before she entered the convent, Sister Madalaine had quite naturally become the chief caretaker at the St. Aquin House. Even though there were plenty of jobs to be had in that field out in the world, she had chosen this because she wanted to help take care of the Mechas already in existence, instead of helping make more of them.

After the evening meal, Sister Madalaine went to the St. Aquin House, now sparsely tenanted with a shutdown gardener Mecha she was trying to find a new locomotion actuator for, and Joe, who sat poised on one of the deep, wide windowsills, overlooking the garden outside. As she entered, he turned toward her, interest showing in his luminous eyes.

"Are you ready, Joe?" she asked. "Time I took a good look at you." She realized too late she'd put that the worst way possible, given the kind of Mecha she had addressed.

He stood up, offering her his arm, but she dropped her gaze as she steered him toward one of the workrooms.

She reached for a hand-held scanner to check his license, but he held up one hand. "I have no license," he said.

"What happened to it?" she asked.

"It was removed," he said, matter of factly.

"All right," she said, puzzled.

She had him unseal his right wrist; she plugged the sensor of a small diagnostic computer into a dock under his dermis. He took this with a wary calm, or what would have looked like it on an Orga. He was not a flesh and blood human, but that didn't bar him from being treated with charity. He regarded her robes with innocent curiosity, as if he thought, 'these are strange garments for such a young woman.' But he did not regard her with disdain the way many people did, but of course Mechas did not judge unless they had been given misinformation about the different classes of people.

She watched the display, but she realized he was watching her. Her discipline was to keep her eye on the display on the computer, but her eyes wanted to obey the impulse to rise and meet his gaze.

"You are very intent at your work, Sister Madalaine," he observed. "Were you ever a technician before you came to this house of the one who made you?"

She glanced at him, avoiding his eyes. "As a matter of fact I was. Still am really, I just don't work for earthly wages any more."

"Yours then is a generous soul," he said.

"I certainly hope so, please God," she said, feeling her cheeks warm. She tried not to let his compliments get to her, but she felt her heart warming despite her efforts otherwise.

Nothing came up on the scan, no viruses, no malfunctions. He was clean mechanically. Sister Superior would run a visual scan of his cube, something Sister Madalaine had freely renounced: the images would remind her too much of her old life, something she calmly put behind her as an earlier phase of her life, especially with her second temporary vows coming up.

"Will this be all you wish to do with me?" Joe asked.

"For now, yes," she said, not looking him in the face.

"You avoid my eyes," he asked. "Is there a reason for this?"

"Well, I'm promised to another," she said.

"But to whom? Is it not so that you Catholic nuns renounce the pleasures afforded by a man's company?"

"We pledge ourselves to a heavenly lover, to the One Who made us."

"Ah," he said, but she couldn't know how much he really understood it.

"Sister Superior may run a visual scan of your cube later," she said, unhooking him from the scanner. "But this will be all for now.

"Indeed," he said, with something like relief.

She turned to go out, but as she did so, her gaze happened to take in his profile. She looked away before he could turn to look at her. Feeling her cheeks warm she went out a little quicker than she had intended.

She met Sister Superior in the hallway. "He's effective, isn't he?" the elder Sister asked.

"I'm afraid so," Madalaine admitted.

"Don't give in to the feelings, but don't give in either," Sister Superior said, in the door to the room. "I know that's easier said than done when your young, but it will make it easier all around.

"I will, Sister," Madalaine replied.

Next morning at the daily assembly of the community after Mass and breakfast, Sister Superior shared the news about the newcomer.

"Joe is the Mecha that was falsely accused of murdering a girl in Haddonfield, New Jersey," she announced. A rustle passed through the gathering. "But he is absolutely innocent of the charges, according to the images on his cube."

"But how did he get this far?" Sister Jeromeia asked. "What brings him here?"

"He is simply wandering now, seeking a place where he can be safe," Sister Superior said. "This, Sister Madalaine tells me, is somewhat unusual among Mechas, but there have been anomalies in his line. Their emotion emulators and personality chips have caused unusually human-like manifestations. Some have even suspected Bella derma of experimenting with proto-emotions."

"Which makes him problematic," said Sister Irene, the portress. "We can't keep him, but we can't let him go either."

"Why not simply send him back to his owner?" Sister Jeromeia said, hands raised with annoyance.

"They cancelled his registration; they're counting him as lost," sister superior said. "I researched that this morning."

"Is there any way he can be reprogrammed for monogamy?" Sister Jeromeia said, beginning to splutter.

"That would require a massive overhaul of his programming," Sister Madalaine said.

"And it still wouldn't be real love anyway," Sister Jeromeia said, defeated.

"It's all he knows," Sister Superior said. "Let him know some peace here for a while."

After the meeting, Sister Madalaine went to the St. Aquin House to run a few repairs on Joe, seal up the cracks she'd seen on his dermis and check the spots where the stones had hit him.

She found Joe perched on the other windowsill, looking out over the garden. He turned toward her and rose as she approached. He started to bow to her, but she stopped him.

"I'm just an ordinary Orga, consecration or not," she said.

"But you are a lover, albeit of a different order," he said.

"Thanks," she said, flattered, but not letting it penetrate. She led him to a worktable and helped him onto it. "Take off your jacket and shirt, please. There's a few cracks in your dermis I have to seal."

"As you wish," he said. He let his jacket slide down from his shoulders and tossed it aside dramatically. Then running his thumb down the front of his shirt, he unsealed it and slid out of it. She tried not to look at him too intently, but she could hardly help noticing his figure and the graceful, molded musculature of his chest. He looked almost like a Michelangelo _ignudo_ from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, one of the graceful, naked wingless male angels poised about the panels. She set to work with a tube of silicon sealant. 

She worked quickly, taking care not to linger, so she wouldn't set his pursuit centers into gear. But as she worked on one spot under his shoulder blade, where it looked like a rock had struck him, he shifted position and looked her in the eye. She almost dropped the tube of silicon.

She felt his gaze meet hers, green as the sea, but as warm as the summer sunlight, growing so warm she had to drop her own gaze or he would have defeated her resolve by just looking at her.

"I only wished to know the color of the eyes that belong to the woman who is tending my wounds," he said.

"They're blue," she said.

"But what shade?" he asked.

"Ultramarine," she said.

"Ah," he said. "The color of the sky at midnight."

"That's a nice way to describe it, but could you hold off on the poetry" she asked.

"As you insist," he said, looking away, closing his eyes to slits, his chin lifted primly as if to say, you know not what you deny yourself.

That night, Sister Madalaine lay alone on her stiff cot, unable to sleep. Joe's eyes still seemed to look into hers, as if his penetrating gaze had burned into her corneas and she could not banish the image.

It wasn't as if she hadn't ever known a man. She'd even once had a muscular, blonde Mecha, an aggressive lover, an older model than the graceful Joe. Sister Jeromeia had been especially hard on her when she learned of this part of Madalaine's checkered past, but Sister Superior had restrained her.

She and Joe, so similar: saved from a violent tongue-lashing, saved from a stoning. Perhaps this was why she had readily extended a helping hand to Joe, because she was paying forward the favor that had been granted her.

'Dear Lord, he is your creature even if men built him for sensual and impure purposes. But shelter us both and find healing for us,' her heart prayed as she slid off the sleep.

Yet even there, she could not escape. She seemed to walk at twilight among ruinous classical buildings, stone pavilions with Corinthian columns, a colonnade with flowers growing out of the cracks between the stones, vines twining up the columns, all but mending the ruined roof overhead.

But everywhere she turned, she saw Joe, kneeling in the shadows, peering at her from behind a column, darting like a dark gazelle across her path, but vanishing just as she glimpsed him. 

At length, she came to stone pavilion shading a raised dais reached by three steps. Something in her compelled her to approach, climb the steps, draw aside the gossamer violet curtain that shielded the interior of the pavilion.

A heap of large pillows, covered in red and black silk and velvet covered the top of the dais, in the midst of which lay a young figure wrapped completely in a long red silken cloth.

The form stirred and turned over toward her, the sheet unwinding from the figure it covered. Joe's head and shoulders emerged, rising as he propped himself up gracefully on one elbow. A soft breeze stirred the sheet that covered the rest of his naked form.

Before she saw him as man had made him, she bolted awake, trembling, sweating, fearful, not of him, but of herself. He knew nothing better than his programming. She was supposed to be the one with full volition, but her flesh seemed just as ruled by impulse as his being was.

To be continued…

Literary Easter Eggs:

The chase scene—based partly on the Gospel story of Christ saving the woman caught in adultery, partly on the opening scene of C.M. Kornbluth's space age vampire story "Shambleau".

Sister Jeromeia—I'll admit she's a female version of Father Jerome, the cranky, disapproving prior in Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael mystery novels

St. Aquin—a shameless thievery from a short story by Anthony Boucher, "The Quest for St. Aquin"


	2. Part Two

+J.M.J.+  
  
Male-Shaped Magdalen  
  
By "Matrix Refugee"  
  
Author's Note:  
  
Some really hard writing here, very difficult sexual writing, no smut but very dark, very steely. When I wrote this, I actually was thinking of another Rumer Godden novel, _Black Narcissus_, which deals with the moral collapse of members of a convent of English nuns in a mission field in the Chinese Himalayas, and which was made into a highly controversial (but otherwise excellent) movie in the late 1940s. Like I said, I don't intend to make nuns look bad here, I'm only showing the moral odyssey of one very flawed Sister.  
  
Disclaimer:  
  
See Part One  
  
  
"Perhaps you should have Sister Mercedes take over looking after the Mechas for a few days, until we can find a place for Joe," Father Marcus sad to Sister Madalaine when she went to confession to him the morning after the dream.  
  
"That might be just the right thing to do," Sister Madalaine said.  
  
"I'll talk to Sister Mercedes," he promised.  
  
  
So for the next few days, she worked in the garden with Rufus, the old gardener, but even there she couldn't completely avoid Joe, though Rufus kept an eye out for "the young metal whippersnapper".  
  
"Too bad you're not a laywoman still," Rufus said as they mulched the hydrangeas. "You'd make a nice pair."  
  
She looked up at the older man's honest, lined face. "Don't tempt me, Rufus. I have a hard enough time controlling my own thoughts."  
  
"Sorry. You're so like my own granddaughter that I forget sometimes."  
  
She kept her eyes on Rufus's eyes the whole time they were talking, then she lowered them to the compost they worked into the soil at the base of the bush. She'd seen Joe on a path below them, looking up at her, not lecherously, but admiringly. She wished he would have looked at her with the former in his eyes, it would make his attentions so much easier for her to repulse.  
"Your friend's getting cabin fever," Sister Mercedes reported to Madalaine after supper one night, two weeks after they had brought Joe to the St. Aquin House.  
  
"Have you told him why he can't leave the convent grounds?" Sister Madalaine asked.  
  
"I did; he understands, but he doesn't like it, if you can put it that way."  
  
"It's the only way to put it. Is that why you're letting him roam the gardens?"  
  
"It was the least I could do for him. He wanted to do more: he was making eyes at me all week."   
  
"Uh oh," Sister Madalaine said, her cheeks warming.  
  
"It wouldn't be so bad if he were of flesh and blood and I was an ordinary lay woman," Sister Mercedes said.  
  
"It's too bad so few men these days are willing to be as gentle and considerate as Joe was programmed to be, then women wouldn't feel like they 'need' something like him," Sister Madalaine said, gazing out the latticed dining room window to the garden path below, where Terez, Rufus's granddaughter come to visit him, stood chatting with Joe. She moved out of the range of the window: a moment later, she entered the dining room through the garden door.  
  
"What a charmer," she said, her face a little pink. She eyed Sister Madalaine. "Oops, I really shouldn't have said that."  
  
"It's all right, you're only human," Sister Mercedes said.  
  
"I shouldn't anyway, Ion might get suspicious if he found out who I was talking to, but that young fellow just gets to me!" Terez said.  
  
"They built him that way," Sister Madalaine said with a shrug.  
  
Nights were the hardest for her. All day long she could keep her hands and her head busy with work, but when she went to sleep on the cot in her cell, the thoughts and images she'd turned away came back to pest her. Of themselves, she knew the dreams were not sinful, but they assaulted her senses so hard that the images often carried over into the day, as floaters on the fringes of her mind. But she set them aside calmly. Flailing at them did no good: rather, it fuelled the fire and the images crowded into her imagination more intensely.  
  
As long as her work kept her away from Joe, she had little trouble, but if she even ventured into the same space as he, some vibration passed between him and her and she caught herself blushing all over. He only had to look at her and that got her temperature soaring.  
  
But, as she found out, she was not the only one suffering on account of Joe. More than once, Sister Irene, the gatekeeper had to drive Bo Bainbridge and his thugs off the convent steps. They'd always leave muttering things like, "Too bad he's only a mech and he can't infect you or get you pregnant, then you'd have to own up!"  
  
Once in a while, Sister Madalaine couldn't help thinking they'd brought trouble to the convent when they'd brought Joe in, but to do otherwise would have ended in his destruction. The CRF had been trying to construct a sanctuary for Mechas in trouble and their sister-house in Salt Lake City had offered to help them, but this was still under construction and until then, they would have to house him in their guest house. There were a few research facilities that were curious about Joe's unusual sense of self-preservation, but they did not dare turn Joe over to them. Too many of these labs practised Mechasection, dismantling Mechas to see what made them work as they did.  
  
The locomotion actuator for the gardener Mecha finally arrived on a rainy day when Joe was confined to the guest house.  
  
Sister Madalaine set to work, installing the part on the old Mecha. she had its metal torso open as she worked amongst its metallic viscerae, when she had a strange feeling she was being watched.  
  
She looked over her shoulder to find Joe standing in the doorway between the work room and the main room of the house. He leaned his shoulders against the doorframe, one hand on his hip, arm akimbo. She looked away, back to the Mecha on the table.  
  
"You are a deft worker," he said. "You find much pleasure in what you do."  
  
"I like helping people," she said.  
  
"So you consider my kind to be persons?"  
  
"Yes. Perhaps not exactly like Orgas, but equitably similar."  
  
She heard his garments rustle as she came to her side. "That is something I have hardly heard from anyone, much less from the religious," he said. "Most religious folk I have encountered wither derided my kind or have used me in ways very much at odds with the spiritual nature they claim to possess." This last he said with a mocking note to his voice.  
  
That didn't surprise her; she knew the types, the ones who warned others of making use of sex-Mechas and yet indulged in the very same activity.   
  
He perched himself on the end of the work table, drawing up one knee and draping his arm over it, his body leaning back, leaning gracefullu against his other arm. He lowered his eyes, watching her at work.   
  
"And what of you? To which coterie do you belong?" he asked.   
  
"Neither," she said.  
  
"But you have renounced the pleasure of a man's company," he pointed out.  
  
"I have, and I think it's sinful for someone to make use of someone like you as a lover. But there are much worse things than that."  
  
He smiled. "Such a contrast to those who regard me as a walking sin."  
  
She tightened the bolts on the locomotion actuator and closed the access plate on the Mecha's torso. She hit the activation switch on the back of its neck.  
  
The gardener Mecha pulled its body upright and turned its head, looking about.  
  
"Can I move now?" it asked in a creaky old man's voice.  
  
"Of course you can," she said, starting to help the gardener off the table and get its feet on the floor, but Joe got up quicker and offered her a hand.  
  
"I would not be a gentleman if I left you to shift that by yourself," Joe said.  
  
"There's a thoughtful young man," the gardener-Mecha said.  
  
"One does what one can," Joe said.  
  
The Sisters soon found an owner for the gardener Mecha; that afternoon, Sister Madalaine delivered it thence. This got her away from Joe for a few more moments.  
  
But the dreams got worse. One night, a week later, she awoke dreanched with sweat, the tee-shirt and black leggins she wore under her habit gummed to her skin, her flesh still tingling. The dream had fooled nature into response.  
  
She got up and went to the window to clear her head with a breath of night air.  
  
Below, in the garden, Joe sat on one of the stone benches, the moonlight gleaming on his glossy black hair and garments, his eyes raised to the heavens. He looked toward her window. She knew that, as a Mecha, he had night vision, but could he see her at the window? A smile crossed his face, and she knew he'd seen her.  
  
She couldn't take it any longer. God forgive her, but she just had to go down there and join him. Leaving her habit where it lay on her one hard chair, she pulled her shoes on and tiptoed down and out to the garden, careful so as not to be heard by the other sleeping Sisters.  
  
She found Joe still waiting, exactly where he had been sitting before. He rose to meet her and helped her to sit down.  
  
"And you came," he said. "Could you not sleep?"  
  
"No, I was dreaming," she admitted.  
  
He sat down on the bench beside her, his thigh brushing hers. She took his hands in hers, looking him in the eye. This was not for her, she told herself: this was for him so his stir-craziness would cease. Something like him had to continue his gallantries, even innocently, or else his ego-enhancer would go awry.  
  
"Did you dream of me?" he asked, looking at her with what looked like a hopeful smile.  
  
She nodded. "I did."  
  
"And how did you dream of me? It might be within my power to make it come true."  
  
"We were alone together, under a flowering bush...in each other's arms."  
  
His smile smoldered and he looked at her with hooded eyes. "Such a beautiful dream, one I would gladly fulfill, had we the proper setting."  
  
"There's a nook down by the river you'd love to see," she said. She stood up. He rose with her and let her lead the way down to the side gate.  
  
She knew the combination for the smart lock on the gate, which the supply trucks used. She led him out beyond the low wall and into ther trees that surrounded the convent, down the slope to the river.  
  
She'd often walked these woods, looking for the derelict Mechas that hid here, so she knew all the nooks and small caves above the river. She led the way, but Joe kept a hand on hers, at times reaching to steady her with his free hand.  
  
_Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_  
  
She moved aside a branch of flowering mulberry just starting to blossom, uncovering a shallow cave, mossy-floored, but dry.  
  
"Is this the bower?" he asked. "Here is the flowering bush."  
  
"Yes, this is it," she said.  
  
He had to stoop slightly to accompany her into the depths of the grotto. She sank down on the moss. He sat down next to her reclinging on his side and pulling her down gently.  
  
"I sense fear in you," he said. "I smell fear flowing from your skin. What have you to fear from me?"  
  
"It's just...I know you need someone to elicit your attentions, and I'd be the first to say they wanted you to romance them up."  
  
"But something holds you back...Is it because you are promised to the one who made you?"  
  
She bent her head, avoiding his eyes. "Yes."  
  
"I have heard your God described as a god of love and forgiveness. If that is so, could he not forgive you should you yield to your nature and my embrace for even this once?"  
  
"He could, but I shouldn't take advantage of His love." She tried to think of a way to explain it that he could understand. "It would be like a woman forcing herself on you."  
  
"That has been enacted upon me, but as soon as she started to force me, my being quiesced to her."  
  
"And so God would let me do what I willed, even if it broke His law, but it would damage my end of the relationship with Him."  
  
She ran her hand over his soft cheek. He needed female attention.  
  
He responded, moving in, closer, lowering his face to hers in a long kiss. She withdrew her desire, letting him drink deeply of her. Although her flesh made total use of him, as only she could, since she knew what he was capable of, her spirit and will withdrew.  
  
"Is your name Madalaine, or is it true that Catholic nuns change their names?" he asked, his lips against hers.  
  
"It was Berlin," she replied.  
  
"Berlin...ahh...a strong name for a strong woman. But I feel you going weak..." His hand ran down her cheek ot her neck and beyond. "Under may touch..." His hand found the hem of her tee shirt and slid underneath. "As pliable as a flower."  
  
Her body might seem that way to his sensors, but her soul hardened itself, frozen, even as she opened his garments and let him unsheath her from hers and run his lips over every inch of her trembling body.  
  
She'd cried out to God in her lovers' arms, but never like this. She detected a note of desperation, even contrition there.  
  
_Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea culpa!_  
  
She fell asleep almost as soon as he had released her. As her awareness withdrew, she sensed both satisfaction and emptiness in her being.  
  
  
She awakened, wondering where she was, why she lay on soft mass, damp beneath her bare skin, and who lay beside her, warming her flesh. Was this a dream?  
  
She started to slip back to sleep, but she jolted awake from realization: Joe lay at her side, one arm draped over her, the other pillowing her head.  
  
She sat up and reached for her clothes, knowing from the absence of her habit the enormity of what had happened, and avoiding Joe's eyes.  
  
"We're in bad trouble," she said.  
  
"Are we?" he asked, innocent.  
  
"I am," she said, turning away. She pulled on her shirt and her blakc leggings.  
  
"Have I served you well, you servant of the servants of God's servants?" he asked, still innocent. He knew nothing better.  
  
She couldn't deny it. To say otherwise would have been a lie. "Yes, you have. You served my body well, but not my soul."  
  
Daybreak glimmered in the mouth of the cave. She looked at him long enough to see the puzzled look in his eyes, the closest he could come to a troubled expression. "Not your soul?"  
  
"It's not your fault," she said. "It's mine. I'm not of this world any more."  
  
"I could tell that you once were a woman of experience," he said, almost teasingly as he reached for his own garments. "I could tell what you wanted."  
  
She turned away from him again. First bell would be ringing shortly. How was she to explain this  
  
Her ears pricked up. She heard voices, men's voices nearby. She edged to the mouth of the grotto and looked out. She recognized the voices of the Bainbridge gang, rummaging about in the bracken. She knew they searched the grottoes just as assiduously as her and Sister Mercedes had, so there was no staying put for her and Joe.  
  
"What is it?" Joe asked, coming up behind her and trying to slip his arm about her waist.  
  
She pushed him back. "They're coming for you."  
  
"Who are they?"  
  
"The same men who tried to stone you. Come on, we have to get back to the convent."  
  
They crept out into the growing daylight. She heard loud cries, cut off by a loud crash in a grotto further upstream.  
  
"I can't take you back to the house," she said.  
  
"Why can you not?" he asked.  
  
"It will be easier for them to catch you: I'll slow you down." He had put his hand on her arm; she pushed him away. "You'll have to go on...alone. You'll have to run, put as much distance between them and you as you can."  
  
"I must tell you one thing: I have never sensed this before, but if I could, I would want to stay with you."  
  
"Put my wants above yours."  
  
"And what do you want of me?" he asked, almost eager.  
  
"RUN!"   
  
A beam of light from a flashlight nosed about in the bracken. She ran right into it, distracting them while Joe escaped.  
  
"There she is! there's one of the sluts that sheltered that thing!" a voice yelled behind the light.  
  
A bolt of energy hit her. She blacked out.  
She came to in the convent courtyard, her clothes soaked. Father Marcus stood over her with an empty pail he set down on the ground.  
  
"She's coming to," he said.  
  
"What happened?" she asked weakly. A group of Sisters surrounded her. Sister Consolata and Sister Tekla, the infirmarian lifted her up off the ground. "Where's Joe?"  
  
"Don't worry about him just yet," Sister Consolata said, as she and Sister Tekla carried her up to the infirmary, Father Marucs following.  
  
"You're very lucky to be alive," he said. "The Bainbridge clan dragged you here, wanted me to give them permission to stone you to death. They said they spotted you with Joe, but they couldn't catch up with him. They'd hit you with a bolt from a shock pistol, but they said you deserved worse."  
  
"What did you do anyway?" Sister Consolata asked.  
  
Now came the moment she dreaded. "The Bainbridges are right: I have done something worthy of death," Madalaine admitted. "I lay with Joe."  
  
"I saw that coming," Sister Mercedes said.  
  
"I wish I had," Berlin admitted.  
  
  
They let her sleep in next morning, but she knew it had less to do with her frayed nerves than other considerations.  
  
About midmorning, Sister Jeromeia came in. Berlin braced herself for the verbal firestorm bound to come.  
  
"Don't start making excuses for yourself," Sister Jeromeia warned. "You know you're guilty."  
  
Bring it on, Berlin thought.  
  
"I guess YOU won't be renewing your temporary vows next week. Is this why you never made full profession? So you could duck out whenever it suited you?"  
  
"I did it that way because I wasn't sure if I could handle it all at once: I just wanted to take it one year at a time." Berlin said.  
  
"We took you in. You seemed sincere when you told us you thought you were called," Sister Jeromeia said, pacing. "But you turned your back on your vows. I've worked with dozens of Sisters over the years, but I never had one as ungrateful or pernicious as you. Beautiful work, Madalaine, or is it Berlin now?"  
  
"I made a mistake. I didn't watch myself..."  
  
"Shut UP! I wasn't finished talking, and I don't need to hear your excuses either." Sister Jeromeia leaned over her, looking her in the eye. "If you were my daughter, I'd have you flogged for this."  
  
Berlin-Madalaine raised her head. "And who'd do the flogging? You? Father Marcus? You know he wouldn't help you with that. And how do you know that I'm not a masochist and that flogging would just get me wailing?"  
  
Sister Jeromeia looked baffled but only for a second. A steely kind of disdain crossed her face.  
  
At that moment, the door opened and Sister Superior came into the room. "That's more than enough, Sister Jeromeia," she said with a cool firm tone. Sister Jeromeia went out.  
  
Berlin looked up at Sister Superior who sat down in the chair beside the bed. "I forgot how hard Sister Jeromeia could be," the older woman said.  
  
"Maybe I needed it, all things considered," Berlin said.  
  
"No, you didn't need that kind of ill-treatment. I know how sensitive you really are."  
  
"I didn't do this because I was lusting after him. I did it just to keep him from going stir-crazy."  
  
"Your devotion is to be admired," Sister Superior said. "However, that doesn't excuse breaking your vows."  
  
Berlin bent her head. "I know."  
  
  
Later that day, Berlin went to the storage room in the basement of the convent, where she found the box containing the clothes she had worn from when she had first entered the convent: a slightly form-fitting black tunic and leggings, and a sleeveless violet caftan with slits in the skirts, almost to the waist, which she wore gathered with a belt.  
  
"So you really are leaving us?" Sister Superior asked, when Berlin came up to her room, to take leave of her.  
  
"I had been considering taking a leave of absence to decide what I really want," Berlin admitted. "And to find Joe if he's all right."  
  
"We know one thing: Bainbridge never got him, or we would have heard about it by now. Do you have any idea where he may have gone?" Sister Superior asked.  
  
"I have an idea where he isn't," Berlin replied. "He won't have gone back to Haddonfield, and since that's so close to Rouge City, he won't have gone there. But if you were a lover-Mecha on the run, what would be your best place to hide?"  
  
"Probably in plain sight amongst a lot of other Mechas."  
  
"Which leaves us only one other possibility: Nova Vegas."  
  
Sister Superior nodded. "If you must go there to find him, then do what you must."  
  
Berlin put out her hand and clasped the older Sister's wrist. "Thank you."  
  
"One thing: you know I don't condemn you for what you did or what you are doing. I'd probably do the same thing, fall for his charms, if I found myself in the same circumstances. I just wish you were leaving under better conditions."  
  
"I may be back. I haven't found him yet and I might not find him at all. I can't tell you how this will end until I've reached it."  
  
  
That evening, with some money borrowed from Father Marcus, Berlin rented a car and set out, heading west for Nova Vegas, keeping an eye open for any male hitchhikers in gleaming black.  
  
Afterword:  
  
I actually intend this to end here, but if you think it needs more closure at the end, let me know. I'll knock something together... 


End file.
